How disruptive does a child have to be to be removed from Primary School?!

[Juggletits]

Ongoing saga at our primary school. One child has been hugely disruptive since day one - attacking other children (stabbing with pencils, stamping on chests, stomach punches, facial damage with nails or sports equipment amongst many others), attacking teachers, throwing chairs, upending tables and regularly trying to escape.

Last term they brought a pocket knife in to school and showed it to other children, cut his own trousers and threatened other children that he "could stab them"

There is an ever growing list of assaults and incidents against many children and the parent community is absolutely baffled as to why the child has not been removed. They clearly need serious and ongoing support and our school is not set up for a child with such a level of additional needs.

The reason from the HT is that "certain thresholds haven't been met"

Does anyone know what these thresholds are from a legal/professional point of view?

It has reached the point that parents are keeping their children out of school because they are not safe in the classroom.

Multiple emails have been sent to the school, Academy Trust, Ofsted and MARU

What more can be done? An entire school is being disrupted by one child - this cannot be right?!

Schools need to:

1. Safeguard all kids. Which includes not being under threat from others in the classroom.
2. Support for the child who is being violent/aggressive.

In my opinion they must do both, and if they cannot, I’d be taking my child out of the class to safeguard them myself and taking this to the highest level.

If the school is not supporting/managing then they need to be open and honest, and also bringing this to the highest level themselves and saying ‘we don’t have enough X or Y’

I'm very aware of this- it's part of the reason all education staff should be in a union and assert their rights in these cases. If a member of staff actually goes to the head with a union rep present and says they feel at risk of harm, the head can't just shrug it off.

A lot of primaries subject their staff to behaviour that would not be tolerated in secondaries, but there's no legal duty on primary schools to do this.

A violent child should not be in mainstream education, no school pupil should have to risk being stabbed or killer in the name of inclusion, nor should any teacher.. Get them out of there at the earliest possible opportunity. Support them by all means but do it in a way that does not risk innocent lives.

Violent behaviour, especially to this extreme is often a sign of SEMH, I agree. But legally it's not as simple as saying "oh, there's violent behaviour, so therefore the child has additional needs."- especially with older students.

Also, once it has got to the stage of bringing a weapon into school, the school needs to act to ensure everyone is safe.

Up thread, someone suggested a 1:1 is enough to keep any primary aged child safe. This isn't true anyway, but it is very much not true if the child has a history of using weapons.

I didn’t say it was simple, but the level of extreme behaviour described here is, legally, a form of SEN.

Also, once it has got to the stage of bringing a weapon into school, the school needs to act to ensure everyone is safe.

I didn’t say anything to the contrary, but schools need to go about it in the right way and follow procedure rather than act unlawfully as so many school do.

If the procedure is that the child is still in school whilst being such a threat to other children, then there must be something wrong with that procedure. Children can’t be put in a vulnerable position, under threat, this is a safeguarding situation for them.

It's really difficult for parents and schools to do anything quickly I'm afraid. Waiting lists for ND assessments can run into years. I think around here it's two to three years now. If the school and parents have applied for an EHCP and are forced to appeal at any point then that could be more than a year before it is in place. If LA stick to timescales (unlikely) and issue it would be twenty weeks but they may decide that the child should stay in the school they are in and then it's a 51 week wait for appeal to SENDIST currently. It's a really difficult situation all round.

Could someone explain why 1:1 from a strong and trained adult is not enough to limit and de-escalate a child's behaviour? If a child is searched on entering the school to ensure that he has no weapons and supervised at all times, how is he going to acquire a 'weapon' and he is he going to approach and attack somebody?

There is no point in taking on staff who cannot do the job. If the adult is inattentive, slow to move, inactive and can't apply their restraint training, then don't employ them. Plenty of mentors and TAs work in primary schools who have acquired the necessary skills. The LA would second outreach services if the expertise was needed.

In your shoes, if I didn't feel my child was safe due to inadequate school procedures, then I would keep them off school and complain to the relevant parties: Local Authority, Governing Body. I'd ask the GP to write a letter saying my child is anxious, if they are, and the impact.

It should be possible to manage a primary-aged child. He's not 6 foot 4 and 18 stone .

It can be very difficult, especially if they have an EHCP in place

I'm seriously amazed that maintained primary schools are places where it's impossible to prevent children from bringing weapons into school, or holding something sharp and hard which could be used to attack another child. It is possible to watch a child's hands and to supervise them attentively.

Anything can be a weapon in school. A sharp pencil, scissors, a book, a door stop, a chair...

Working with a child who is violent and unpredictable means you always have to be ready to pounce. It's exhausting and stressful. Sadly the wage for a 1:1 doesn't reflect this.

"Could someone explain why 1:1 from a strong and trained adult is not enough to limit and de-escalate a child's behaviour?"

If physical intervention is required then 2:1 rather 1:1 is needed. Likewise if a child needs constant close watching to prevent dangerous behaviour.

Staff need to be properly trained in physical restraint and management techniques and then you employ the suitable staff to be 1:1 support workers who can manage to apply the training and sustain close supervision of the child who displays aggression. You have to recruit the right people. You can't say 'Here is our complement of staff who want to work in this school, and they are all going to take turns working with this very challenging and aggressive child. ' Of course an untrained and physically unsuited person is going to feel vulnerable working with a child they lack the skills to work with.

The school is there to meet the needs of the children on roll, and if they haven't got anyone who can do the job, they need to recruit or tell the LA they cannot meet their needs, and it isn't safe to have them on site.

I wonder what the school's risk assessment has been?

@Diverseopinions
The teachers can't watch 30 children simultaneously. My dd teacher said this outright to me.

We are having very similar issues in my Dd class. She is 9.

One child is aggressive.

It's awful for all of them in that classroom at times. Teacher included.

I don't know what the answer is for any of it.

Of course. The school or LA will have to provide 2: 1. I doubt if that would be needed for this child. It would usually be an out of control meltdown which would need more than 1 trained behaviour mentor to manage. Planning sounds the critical factor with this child. Don't let him enter school premises when carrying a weapon. Work out what he is going to allowed to do at breakdown and where he will be going, and plan and equip the session. Don't, for instance, just send him off to play with the other children, 'supervised' by an adult who is standing firmly in one place, watching sporadically from time to time. . A physically strong member of staff, trained to manage challenging behaviour should be adequate.

If strategies are put in place now, they can guide the management which other settings puts in place later. The younger the child, the easier it is to teach them alternative behaviours..

Having your behaviours anticipated and not being allowed the leeway to carry them out is a deterrent to most children who experience challenging issues. Children do change as a result of the application of tried and tested techniques, which unfortunately, the school isn't putting in place.

Don't let the child take a pair of scissors and try to stab someone with it. Yes. You do always need to be ready to manage challenging behaviour. You have to be attentive. That is the job. Specially trained staff from a pru could be seconded in. But it needs to be recognised that the ability to be vigilant is a requirement of the job of specialist behaviour mentor.

The child is unlikely to be on the verge of kicking off or attacking someone all if the time. The training for specialist behaviour mentoring covers recognising and anticipating the triggers for challenging outbursts and de-escalating behaviour - before it becomes a crisis. Staff should see an incident coming. In between incidents, children such as the one being described, often engage in activities in the usual way, so the 1: 1 support worker can be sitting, encouraging, but not primed to leap up.. Once you have the proper training and the environment has been risk-assessed and adapted, the job of the behaviour mentor becomes less stressful. Staff have to be physically fit, because working with challenging children is often active.

Really, is this the case, that scissors would be left accessible to a child who has previously attacked a peer with something similar?

Are you suggesting pencils aren't placed on tables?

I'm not disagreeing with you that it's possible to get the correct support but I've got first hand experience of a child who was incredibly unpredictable, very strong and would use normal classroom resources as weapons.

You may get have to give that particular child a different type of writing implement and yes, the obvious strategy would be for him to have his own work station.

A proper risk assessment needs to be done by the SENCO as to whether 1:1 is going to be sufficient and what are the likely behaviours. I think that stronger male staff are suitable for the role of behaviour mentor.

I read about the crisis in education, but I didn't know that outreach services to give advice and SENCOs no longer exist. There is literature and training available to give advice on managing challenging behaviour.

@Diverseopinions
There is a child in my dd class who is bigger physically than the male teacher assigned to support. The actual teacher is about 5ft

She is tiny.

She would be unable to restrain him. He has meltdowns. Not his fault he becomes overwhelmed. He's not the violent child but is prone to throwing chairs etc. not at his classmates and he's not violent to people but he loses control and chairs have been thrown. It's so dangerous and so awful for them all. Him included.

The other child is violent towards his classmates. He's tiny. Teacher can't restrain him either because she's about the same size as him.

The support teacher is split between classes. He can't be everywhere at once.

There does t see. To be enough funding for any support.

The child I worked with would yank pencils from other children's hands. Have you worked with a similar child?

If the child doesn't have a support worker because of funding issues, they can't be in school. The LA must surely accept this. Funding can be secured at a national level. In any case, how could the teacher teach the class and manage the behaviour of a child with challenging conduct? She can't be looking at the board, teaching 30 children and sitting next to that child. You can only manage challenging behaviour by being near to the child in question.

To be fair the idea isnt to have someone who can restrain a child so they dont need to be big, its to have someone who prevents the situation happening using all sorts of techniques. But obviously this isnt always possible. Restraint is very much a last resort.

@Diverseopinions I agree and therefore she cant. So when it kicks off it kicks off.

"If the child doesn't have a support worker because of funding issues, they can't be in school. The LA must surely accept this."

In the meantime with insufficient funding it just goes on until something serious happens. Nothing changes.

If the child doesn't have a support worker because of funding issues, they can't be in school. The LA must surely accept this.

Unless the school are going to follow due process and formally exclude they can’t just say a pupil can’t attend otherwise it would be an illegal exclusion.